The present invention generally relates to a sheet feeder having means for quick mounting and removal to be used in an envelope inserting machine or the like, and, more particularly, to a sheet feeder for feeding sheets from a vertical stack.
In an inserting machine for mass mailing, there is a gathering section where enclosure material is gathered before it is inserted into an envelope at an envelope insertion area. The gathering section is sometimes referred to as a chassis subsystem, which includes a gathering transport with pusher fingers rigidly attached to a conveyor belt and a plurality of sheet feeders mounted above the transport. If the enclosure material contains many documents, these documents must be separately fed from different sheet feeders. Inserting machines and sheet feeders are well known. For example, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,660,030 (Auerbach et al.) discloses an envelope inserter station, wherein envelopes are separately provided to an envelope supporting deck where envelopes are spread open so as to allow enclosure material to be stuffed into the envelopes. An exemplary inserting machine is shown in FIG. 1. As shown, an inserting machine 10 typically includes an envelope feeder/inserter station 12 and a plurality of sheet feeders 20. The envelope feeder/inserter station 12 includes an envelope feeder 14 above an envelope insertion area 16. Documents 22 are separately released from the sheet feeders 20 onto a long deck 30 and collated as the released documents 22xe2x80x2 are pushed by a plurality of pusher fingers 32 driven by one or more endless belts or chains 34 toward the envelope feeder/inserter station 12. At the same time, a stack of envelopes 18 are placed on the envelope feeder 14 so that one envelope at a time is released from the envelope feeder 14 into the envelope insertion area 16 where the envelope is spread open to allow the collated documents to be stuffed into the envelope. Typically the sheet feeders are fixedly mounted to inserting machine 10 above the deck 30. As shown, the enclosure feeder 20 has a slant tray 24 for supporting the documents 22 to be released. This type of slant tray design has a very limited capacity for stacking the documents 22, partly due to the fixed distance between adjacent enclosure feeders 20. Slant trays are widely used in envelope inserting machines, as can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 4,501,417 (Foster et al.), U.S. Pat. No. 4,753,429 (Irvine et al.) and U.S. Pat. No. 5,660,030 (Auerbach et al.). U.S. Pat. No. 5,120,043 (Mazullo) also discloses an enclosure feeder with a slant tray for supporting the documents. U.S. Pat. No. 4,817,368 (DePasquale et al.) discloses a mailing inserting and collating apparatus, wherein a plurality of envelope hoppers each contains a vertical stack of mailing inserts for releasing the inserts into a plurality of opened envelopes. Under each envelope hopper, a rubber kicker roller having an arcuate outer surface, along with a vacuum port, is used to retrieve the bottommost insert from the stack. The major advantages of the vertical stack include that it can support more inserts or documents to be released and that the replenishing of documents is easy. As mentioned earlier, U.S. Pat. No. 4,177,979 (Orsinger et al.) discloses an inserting machine having a plurality of vertical stack feeders for feeding enclosure material, wherein the feeders can be moved to various positions along the chassis and fixed in place at those positions. As disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,177,979, the chassis frame has a plurality of apertures for the feeders to be bolted to the chassis frame. Thus, it is possible to change the position of the feeders by removing bolts, moving the feeders to new positions and fastening the bolts through different apertures. Because, each of the feeders 20 has rollers 36 to release the enclosure materials at the appropriate time, it is necessary to link the rollers 36 to a driving mechanism by pulleys 38 and timing belts 40, as shown in FIG. 2.
In prior art inserting machines, the close proximity of the feeders and the released documents makes it difficult to access the paper path to clear document jams. U.S. Pat. No. 5,454,554 (Boughton et al.) discloses a feeder assembly having a slant tray, which can be pivotally mounted to an inserter machine frame to provide easy access to the paper path underlying a feeder downstream from the releasing feeder for clearing paper jams. When the documents are fed from a vertical stack, jam clearance becomes more difficult.
Thus, it is advantageous and desirable to provide a vertical stack sheet feeder that can be easily removable from the chassis and has access to jams.
According to the first aspect of the present invention, a feeding module for feeding sheet material items one at a time from a stack onto a conveying mechanism whereby the fed items are moved from upstream to downstream in a moving direction along a chassis, said feeding module comprising:
a mounting support fixedly mounted on the chassis; and
a sheet feeder releasably mounted on the mounting support, wherein the sheet feeder comprises:
a frame;
a tray, mounted on the frame, for supporting the stack of the sheet material items;
means, located adjacent to the bottom of the stack, for retrieving the items;
a feeding channel, located adjacent to the retrieving means, for channeling the retrieved items to the conveying mechanism, wherein the feeding channel comprises a first channel guide and a second channel guide spaced apart to define a release path for guiding the retrieved items through the release path to the conveying mechanism, and wherein the first channel guide is removably mounted on the frame so as to allow the first channel guide to be separated from the second channel guide for jam clearance and maintenance of the sheet feeder; and
means, attached to the frame, for securing the sheet feeder to the mounting support.
Preferably, the securing means comprises a mounting rod fixedly attached to the frame, and wherein the mounting support comprises two mounting members spaced from each other along the moving direction, each mounting member having a groove to receive the rod for mounting the sheet feeder to the mounting support.
Preferably, the securing means further comprises a latch operable in a first position for preventing the rod from being separated from the grooves and in a second position allowing the rod to be separated from the grooves.
Preferably, the feeding channel comprises a plurality of rollers disposed on the first channel guide for guiding the released items through the release path.
Preferably, the sheet feeder has a front side facing the downstream end and a rear side facing the upstream end, and the feeding channel is located on the rear side of the sheet feeder such that the released items enter the release path along a direction substantially opposite to the moving direction. According to the present invention, the first and second channels are curved from the rear side toward the front side of the sheet feeder such that the released items emerge from the release path along a direction substantially the same as the moving direction.
Preferably, the sheet feeder further comprises a driving mechanism operatively connected to the retrieving means for retrieving the sheet material items, and the driving mechanism is electrically connected to a power source in the chassis.
Preferably, the first channel guide comprises a connection means for rotatably attaching the first channel guide to the frame so as to allow the first channel guide to be moved away from the second channel guide at one end of the feeding channel.
According to the second aspect of the present invention, a feeding module for feeding sheet material items one at a time from a stack onto a conveying mechanism whereby the fed items are moved from upstream to downstream in a moving direction along a chassis, said feeding module comprising:
a mounting support fixedly mounted on the chassis; and
a sheet feeder releasably mounted on the mounting support, wherein the sheet feeder comprises:
a frame;
a tray, mounted on the frame, for supporting the stack of the sheet material items;
means, located adjacent to the bottom of the stack, for retrieving the items;
a feeding channel, located adjacent to the retrieving means, for channeling the retrieved items to the conveying mechanism, wherein the feeding channel comprises a first channel guide and a second channel guide spaced apart to define a releasing path for guiding the retrieved items through the releasing path to the conveying mechanism, and wherein the first channel guide is removably mounted on the frame so as to allow the first channel guide to be separated from the second channel guide for jam clearance and maintenance of the sheet feeder; and
means, attached to the frame, for securing the sheet feeder to one of the mounting supports.
The present invention will become apparent upon reading the description taking in conjunction with FIGS. 3 to 10.